Behind Closed and In Public Eyes: Communism and the 1953 Iranian Coup D’état
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Issue Date
2015-04-10
Authors
Wolfe, Conner A.
Publisher
Keywords
Iran , Communism , Mosaddegh , Cold War , 1953
Abstract
For MI6 and the imperialists of the United Kingdom, the 1953 Iranian coup d’état was carried out to re-secure the oilfields of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—soon to become British Petroleum—nationalized by the administration of democratically elected and domestically popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. This imperialist reasoning is often applied to the United States as well to describe its sponsorship of and participation regime change. Recently declassified CIA documents reveal an often downplayed motivation for the clandestine actions of the United States in 1953 as the driving factor. These documents do not claim oil as motivation yet frame CIA participation as embroiled in the anti-communism of the Cold War. It would be a fear of the Soviet Union and Iran’s own Tudeh Party that would lead the fiercest of United States’ Cold Warriors, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and eventually President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to approve the 1953 Iranian coup d’état.